


Gifts from the Sea, or, Two Wet Feet

by HoneySempai



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fishing Village, Crabbing, Dancing, F/M, Fishing, Gift Exchange, Gift Fic, Gift Giving, Human Peggy Carter, Liberties taken with marine biology and audiology, Little Mermaid Elements, Music, Selkie Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-16 23:51:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13064775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai
Summary: “A good relationship has a pattern like a dance ... The joy of such a pattern ... is the joy of living in the moment.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh,Gifts from the SeaSteve wants to dance with Peggy, but he has a problem.Peggy wants to dance with Steve, so she has a solution.Originally written forYourBuddyYourPalYourBuckyas part of theSteggy Secret Santa Exchange.Thissong actuallywasn’tthe inspiration, but it’s recommended listening.





	Gifts from the Sea, or, Two Wet Feet

**Author's Note:**

> I say "selkie" but Steve is more like a mermaid with the bottom half of a seal rather than a fish. So yeah, on land he moves something like [this](https://youtu.be/qVuVtMFBMQE) if he doesn’t shift. Don’t...don’t think about it too hard.

Steve first sees Peggy because she beds down for the night in a dinghy tied to the dock, a few thick quilts on the floor of her little boat affecting a mattress. Coming close to shore one night in pursuit of a midnight snack, he peeks over the side of her boat; she does nothing but rest, but she’s enchanting by both aquatic and human standards, and Steve leaves a small pink stone on the rim of the boat, partly as an expression of his admiration, and also as an apology for, impolitely, not making his presence known. 

(Peggy thought that the stone must have been stuck to the bottom of her shoe and come off when she stepped inside the boat.)

He sees her again when a fish he’s hunting flings itself into her net, and his hope that he could disentangle it before she started to pull up their haul is thwarted. Unfortunately by now his claw is stuck, and his attempt to get free turns the interaction into an inadvertent tug-of-war that ends with Peggy dragging Steve headfirst into one of the posts of the fishing pier.

“Do you mind?” Peggy demands, once Steve stops flailing long enough to bob to the surface and her field of view, flipper-like hands still treading water and netting. 

“My lunch seems to have gotten caught in your net,” he smiles, somewhat bashfully, up at her. 

“Well I suppose that makes it _my_ lunch, doesn’t it?” Peggy tosses back, but her annoyance has melted into amusement. “Here. Let go for a moment; I’ll fetch it for you.”

He tries to do it gracefully, he really does, but his claw is stuck too thoroughly, and the fine mesh tears under his weight as Peggy lifts it into the air, ripping a hole half Steve’s length and freeing at least three catches. 

“Oh, _dammit_...”

“Let me!” Steve yelps immediately; now finally free, he dives back under the water. The crab is easy enough to catch, and he resurfaces just long enough to toss it onto the pier before he dives again. The fish prove more slippery, and one makes it to freedom while Steve is busy catching the other. Steve swims as far a radius as he deems practicable, but the commotion has signaled all potential prey to flee the area, and Steve returns with one hand full of a dead fish, and the other with an apology in the form of a red rock speckled with black. 

(This gives Peggy pause, when he opens his palm to offer it to her, but she decides that he’s guileless enough.)

“Is there any way you can fix this?” Peggy asks, holding up her torn net. 

Steve shakes his head glumly. “We don’t use those. I could get you a spear?” Most selkies hunt with their hands, but spears come in handy for larger and more dangerous prey that should be stuck from a distance. 

Peggy purses her lips, considering. A spear would be useful to a human for the same reasons as it would be to an aquatic; a net is good for catching a lot at once, but a sufficiently large octopus or eel caught on a spear could potentially feed the same amount of people. “That might do. Wait!” 

Steve resurfaces immediately, looking up at her. 

She holds up the cauldron in which the unfortunate crab has been deposited. “I thought we were having lunch?” 

She’s dug a fire pit and set up a spit several feet inland in preparation for her meal, and she’s got a fire started by the time Steve beaches and bounces his way up the firm sand to her. She giggles at the sight, raising his hackles, but she makes no further commentary, biting or otherwise, instead asking him if he’d like to try his fish cooked, in the human way. 

It sounds weird and faintly disgusting. “Sure, I’ll give it a try.”

Peggy’s dinghy is nearby, and as she sets up her makeshift kitchen, Steve inquires about it. As the fish roasts and the crab boils he learns that Peggy sleeps in her boat to get away from her parents’ house, and because it soothes her; “I like the roll of the waves underneath me. A bed stays perfectly still. It’s...unnerving. I prefer to keep moving.”

“Stillness” sounds intolerable to one who has barely spent any time on solid ground since his days as a pup. He nods, and she looks happy to have someone finally understand her. 

He also learns about her “family”—a facsimile to a school that only includes a breeding pair and their offspring, in Peggy’s case at least—and the fact that she recently rejected a mate for being “far too dull. He didn’t appreciate my water bed at all.”

“Sounds like you’re well rid of him.”

“Oh well don’t hold back,” Peggy laughs, handing Steve his cooked fish. 

Steve’s “family”, as Peggy learns between his bites, is a sprawling school, with small pods—“cliques is what I think land-dwellers call them”—of individuals who prefer each other’s company. He and his closest friend, Bucky, are the informal leaders of his pod, which also includes Sam, Natasha, Wanda, Maria, Clint, and Scott; all whelped in the same year, and quickly pairing off amongst themselves and with a few outside their little group. 

“Anyone special for you?” Peggy asks, and Steve is both shy and pleased about shaking his head no. 

Cooked fish and boiled crab aren’t so bad compared to raw, Steve decides, particularly when he gets to watch, intrigued and almost enthralled, as she shows him how humans clean and gut the crab. Apparently there are even fancier ways to prepare it, for which Peggy has little patience but much enjoyment. “The Starks serve the best seafood,” she informs him, the Starks being one of the handful of wealthy people in this town. “Howard Stark’s throwing a birthday party for his son tomorrow, if you want to try some.”

“I’d be invited?”

“It’s a townwide party,” Peggy says, throwing her arm back to indicate the houses lining the horizon. “Starks never do anything by half. They’ll be holding a banquet on this pier,” she indicates the site of their surprisingly well-fated tug-of-war, “and a dance on that one,” she says, pointing to the next dock, a much fancier one that sports a gazebo lined with currently unlit fairy lights. 

“A dance?” 

“Mmhmm. Are you familiar?”

“I...know the theory.”

“Well if you’d want to take legs for the night,” Peggy says, suddenly almost shy even in her straightforwardness, “I’d be happy to show you the, ah...the practical.”

The question fills him up with something pleasantly hot and pink; it almost makes him forget the impossibility of the request, which makes suddenly remembering it all the more crushing.

“I would,” Steve says. “But...”

Peggy tilts her head, waiting.

Everyone knows the legend of the mermaid princess who visited an evil witch, exchanging her fins and voice for legs and a chance at the prince’s heart. Romantics like to end the tale with a wedding and the witch’s death; cynics prefer the ending where the jilted princess dissolves into sea foam. Whatever the details, one of the morals of the story that all can agree on is that in order to get something, one must give something up. It’s a law of nature as well as magic. Even for selkies, who don't have to visit a witch to affect a transformation.

“It’s just that...whenever I take legs,” Steve says, “I lose...”

“Your voice?”

Steve shakes his head. “My hearing.”

“ _Oh_. Well...” Peggy thinks. “There are deaf people in the village. If the band plays loud enough, they can feel the vibrations and dance to that.”

Steve considers, almost letting himself hope, but reality puts a stop to it within seconds. “I’m...I’m pretty shaky on my feet. And we don’t really...I don’t know how to dance like a human does. It’s not something we do.”

There is music underwater, and beautiful music at that. It ranges from the lively, bright tunes of the schools close to the shoreline, more sparkling and punctuated as a genre in comparison to the flowing and low-toned melodies of the deep, open ocean. The collective aquatic repertoire ranges from gentle lullabies to stormy choruses; mating songs, hunting songs, dirges; songs that warn of danger and that celebrate holidays. 

But the music of the aquatic nations is as rhythmless and freeform as the tides and waves from which it was born, so while there is singing underwater, there is no dancing, at least not in the way there is on land. For those schools living near the shoreline, it’s something of a pastime to hop up on the rocks or beach themselves to observe the humans entertaining themselves in this way. Steve’s seen a few dances himsef, but never shifted to join in before. For all the grace he’d be able to affect, he might as well keep his flippers.

“I see,” Peggy says, quiet in her disappointment. She glances away for a moment, working her jaw; when she looks back at him it’s impossible to tell what she had been thinking. “Well, you can still come anyway, if you’d like. I’d love to see you.”

Steve wonders, briefly, how much of each other they’re actually going to see, but decides that any amount is worth the awkwardness of hanging out in the shallow water all night watching her attention getting stolen by the rest of the land-dwellers.

“Sure.”

He decides any amount is worth the bright smile he's awarded in exchange for this promise, as well.

*

There's no real "dressing up" for selkies, at least not if they remain in the water, but Steve makes sure his pelt and hair are impeccably claw-combed the next afternoon, before he dares surface near the beach. He spends a good amount of time locating pretty stones, as well, and he beaches near the pier where the dancing will take place while the sun is still up, carefully carving just the right-sized and -spaced notches into the shaft of the spear so he can inset the rocks. He remembers last minute that this is a birthday party for a stranger, so he quickly hunts down two crabs and a string of seaweed to offer to the feast, packing them up in a lidded bucket that some human had thrown into the sea long ago and has since become his pod's prized possession.

"I'm gonna need the bucket back," he informs Peggy when he sees her, holding it up to the pier for her to take.

"All right," Peggy laughs as she takes it.

"And this is for you," he says, unable to wait, holding the spear up to her (horizontally, thankfully, so he appears to be threatening neither her nor himself).

"Oh, _Steve_ ," Peggy breathes, as she runs her hands along the shaft and, carefully, taps the point with her finger to test its sharpness. "Steve, this is wonderful. Here, wait just a moment; I'm going to put this with my boat. Wouldn't do to frighten any of the other partygoers..."

She disappears for a moment, taking Steve's offering of food to the appropriate people, and then doubles back, heading towards her dinghy. Steve watches her, noting that she’s dressed differently today; where yesterday she was in the heavy, practical clothes of fishermen, today she’s in a form-fitting tank top and matching skirt. That must be human partywear. Steve thinks she looks equally beautiful in either get-up.

“You must be Steve,” a pretty blonde from above him, drawing his attention away. “I’m Angie,” she continues, waving and grinning at him. “Peggy’s friend. She told me about you.”

Peggy comes back to Steve and Angie chatting pleasantly, and sits down on the edge of the pier to join them. More of Peggy’s friends join in as the pier starts to fill up, including Howard and his son Tony, who Steve winds up getting commandeered by since the boy is absolutely _fascinated_ with aquatics and is trying to build an apparatus that would let a human swim like a selkie. After a few minutes of Tony cajoling Steve into turning this way and that to show off how his tail end moves, Howard has to hustle the kid away to greet other guests, and gestures to the band to strike up, to cover Tony’s loud protests.

“Guess the party’s started,” Gabe, one of Peggy’s friends, laughs. “Good meetin’ ya, Steve,” he directs at the selkie, holding his hand out for Angie to take. After that Peggy’s friends excuse themselves one by one, partnering off as the band warms up the crowd with mid-tempo songs, until only Peggy is left. 

“I can entertain myself,” Steve says, once his and Peggy’s one-on-one conversation fades into a lull. “If you wanna go...” he gestures further back, “...join your friends.”

Peggy glances at him, looking slightly amused. He barely has a second to parse the meaning of the expression before she stands and gestures for him to follow her as she goes to the far end of the pier. He trails a few feet behind her, but darts forward when, after she pauses at the edge, she hops off the boards and into the water.

She doesn’t need his help to surface, but she’s giggling from the shock of water colder than the air around her, and while he’s hanging onto her she might as well cling to him, to expedite warming up. 

“What was _that_ about?” Steve demands, letting her go once she seems to straighten herself out. In the near distance Steve can hear Peggy’s friends laughing.

“You said you weren’t comfortable dancing like a human,” Peggy says, treading water towards the beach until her feet just barely touch sand, so Steve can, holding himself horizontally, stay afloat no matter where he positions himself around her. “I thought we could figure out how you could dance like a selkie.”

Steve wonders if he could possibly be in the unhappy ending of this story, since he could easily dissolve into sea foam right about now.

Peggy reaches out, gesturing for him to come close to her; once he—somehow clumsily, despite being in his element—does, she fits her fingers through his, getting taken aback by the feel of webbing, and equally quickly adjusting to it.

“I mean we _do_ dance,” Steve blurts out. “Just...just not like humans do. It’s still moving to music, it’s just...it’s a lot of swaying and spinning. And looping. A lot of it’s under, under the surface.”

“Hm.” Peggy looks pleasantly thoughtful. “Well, I can hold my breath for two minutes underwater. So once Tony’s finished those mechanical flippers, maybe...”

“And...and there’s also breaching,” Steve mumble-stammers, eyes going unconsciously wide with the projected sight of Peggy following him underwater, meeting his pod, celebrating a full moon with them...

”Oh, can we do that _now_?” Peggy asks, her eyes lighting up. “It always looks like such fun. It seems so...joyous.”

”It is, but...” His eyes narrow suddenly, confused. “Humans aren’t...I mean you’re strong, I’m sure you are, but I thought...humans weren’t built for—”

“Well. I’ll just have to hold on very tightly, won’t I?”

She lets Steve gape for a moment before she smiles, broadly, and cocks her head questioningly, motioning for him to turn around. He does it almost unthinkingly, but certainly not unblushingly, and he only gets warmer when she wraps her arms around his chest, and her legs around his lower body.

“It’s only fair,” Peggy says, her lips brushing his ear. “I showed you how humans cook seafood. Now _you_ show _me_ how selkies dance for joy.”

”It won’t be just for show,” Steve says before he realizes how mortified he’ll be immediately after saying it; a not-precisely-rare moment of the barrier between his brain and mouth crumbling like so many shipwrecks.

Luckily Peggy’s laugh is warm and receptive, and when she brings her head back down from where her mirth tilted it back, he can feel her belly expand as she takes a deep, pointed breath.

He spins them on the way down and away from the shallows, just for fun, and he thinks—when the pair of them breach the surface, higher and more vertical than he’s ever gone despite the extra weight—the clipped but delighted peal of laughter she releases before she takes in another breath, to prepare for the dive back down, is the only dancing music he’ll ever need to hear.


End file.
